


Valentine's Hopscotch

by zenonaa



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School, Dangan Ronpa: Another Episode, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: F/M, Happy Ending, Valentine's Day, other characters too but they appear kind of briefly, some misgendering but never by the narrative, transgender character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:09:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22719700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenonaa/pseuds/zenonaa
Summary: 'For Valentine’s day, Touko’s teachers would often task everyone with making a woven basket. It involves two different coloured pieces of paper, and after some cutting, folding and weaving, all that’s left to do is glue on a handle, made from paper or a ribbon, and voila. You have a heart-shaped basket, its main body a checkered pattern in a diamond shape and different coloured semi circles sticking out either side.'A collection of Fukawa's Valentine's Day experiences.
Relationships: Fukawa Touko/Togami Byakuya
Comments: 9
Kudos: 52





	Valentine's Hopscotch

For Valentine’s day, Touko’s teachers would often task everyone with making a woven basket. It involves two different coloured pieces of paper, and after some cutting, folding and weaving, all that’s left to do is glue on a handle, made from paper or a ribbon, and voila. You have a heart-shaped basket, its main body a checkered pattern in a diamond shape and different coloured semi circles sticking out either side.

As for what goes in the baskets... well, chocolates. Initially, most children are not bothered with customs, so everyone gets everyone chocolate rather than only girls giving them out.

* * *

At kindergarten, Ishizaka-sensei brings in chocolate multipacks, and everyone in the class ambles about, dropping a wrapped piece into everyone else’s baskets. Touko’s basket is pink and purple, no blue, thank you, and no one thinks twice about that. When Ishizaka-sensei is distracted, trying to fix someone’s basket, Touko swipes a couple more chocolates from the table. Then she walks over to a table where her friend, Hiroto, is already eating some of his chocolate.

“H-Here, Hiroto-kun,” says Touko, holding out her hand. “For... For being my best friend.”

Without a ‘thanks’, he stuffs them into his mouth.

She smiles.

* * *

The burden of obtaining chocolates falls on students in elementary school. Fortunately for Touko, tomo choco tends to be inexpensive, and in class, Watamoto-sensei has them weave heart baskets. Yet again, Touko’s basket is pink and purple, pinned to the edge of her desk. 

Occasionally, a classmate slips cheap chocolate into it. She mouths ‘thank you’s, but nobody lingers, already moving to the next desk, where they gift smiles with their chocolates.

A girl draws up.

“Pink?” the girl scoffs, staring at Touko’s basket. “That’s for girls.”

Then she laughs, drops a chocolate in, and prances off. Touko curls up.

* * *

“This is kinda fancy for tomo choco,” remarks Hiroto, peering into the woven heart. His eyes flit from the basket to Touko, who stands before him with her hands clasped together. 

Only they remain in the shoe locker room, his kendo uniform in his duffel bag.

“It’s not tomo,” Touko starts. He interrupts.

“Aren’t girls supposed to give chocolates? Not boys?”

She winces. Straightens. Trembles. “I am a - ”

“Oi, Hiroto-kun!” calls a club member from the doorway. 

Hiroto turns toward them. “Coming!”

He tips the chocolates into his bag and on his way out, tosses the basket into the trash.

* * *

Touko sits on her bed, her legs crossed. The mattress dips in the middle because the boards broke a few years back and because her heart is very heavy. She sniffles and fiddles with a sheet of newspaper. 

His face stares up at her. Hiroto’s. Under a headline of ‘BLOODSTAIN FEVER SHIKOKU VICTIM NAMED’. Touko tears his picture out with her fingers even though she knows where she can find scissors. The newspaper quotes the eulogy she wrote for his funeral. She starts mouthing it off by heart, then breaks down sobbing. 

Her bedroom listens but doesn’t provide any comfort.

* * *

Most students eat in their homeroom, but in Touko’s junior high school, there’s a nook under a stairwell on the east side of the main building that she retreats to. If the library allowed it, she would eat there, but it doesn’t, so she finds refuge here, legs tucked up toward her chest. Beside her sits her tray, indentations for mixed veg, rice and meat.

She opens her paper heart and reaches in. Something brushes against her and she jerks her hand out.

A stinkbug. Miraculously, it’s still alive. Touko watches it fidget on her arm and names it ‘Kameko’.

* * *

“Hey... Fukawa-san, right?”

She pauses in the hallway and looks around. It’s a boy, her age - she recognises him from a neighbouring class.

“Y-Yes?” she stammers, shoulders hunched.

“I was wondering...” He puts his hands in his pockets and gives a smile, drooping on one side. “... if you’ll see a movie with me next Tuesday?”

Her eyes widen. Tuesday is Valentine’s day. She places a hand over her heart.

“I... w-would love to!” she croaks.

“Cool,” he says, then shrugs. “When you work out the details, let me know, okay?”

Touko nods. He strides off, and she cradles her cheeks.

* * *

For three days and three nights, Touko trudges through magazines. Sifts through internet forum pages. Advice blogs. Remembers all the books she has read. Touko does all this because a boy asked her out on a date. In the end, she decides on a three movie feature and even watches them beforehand so she’s prepared for the discussion afterwards.

And so, thirteen years old, she goes on her first date, giving him a paper heart with chocolates inside.

Except, during the first movie, he sneaks out.

When she eventually leaves, she sees the heart scrunched up in a trash can.

* * *

When one of Touko’s mothers finally wrangles out the reason why Touko’s crying in her bed under her duvet that night, she tuts dramatically.

“What did you expect?” she asks, sneering. Touko’s blotchy face quivers. “It’s your fault for falling for such an obvious joke. Honestly, what sort of self-respecting girl would date a boy like you?”

Okay, so Touko changed a few details.

When her mother leaves, Touko opens her satchel and pulls out the crumpled heart basket. She trembles, then tears it into pieces, and she can’t hear its screams over the grating wail screeching in her head.

* * *

Come high school, Touko applies to an all-girls one across the country, and after getting a diagnosis and agreeing to send payments to her parents on a monthly basis, she enrolls. The Valentine Days spent there are unremarkable, which for Touko, are the best so far. She receives tomo choco and overhears her classmates babble about their plans. 

“... we’re seeing a movie,” boasts a girl. Her friends swoon.

As for Touko, she spends that evening stumbling through alleyways, the local grocer’s lifeless face burned into her mind, stinging almost as much as the new tally mark carved into her thigh.

* * *

While attending Riverbank Girl's High School, Touko receives an offer to join Hope’s Peak Academy for her writing ability, and she enrolls there with the title of ‘Literary Girl’. Normally, she dreads Valentine’s Day, but as it approaches, she anticipates it with an excited quiver in her chest because of the student who sits in front of her in class.

Byakuya Togami.

Everyday, she stares at the back of his head. At first, they clashed. After all, what would he know about hard work? The real world? As a well-off heir, it seemed to her like he had everything he wanted handed to him. He didn’t earn her place, like she did. Didn’t fight to survive, like she did.

This is what she used to think.

During a skiing trip, their teacher paired them up, and she let slip her thoughts. Byakuya glared and weaved a tale of a young heir not expected to be anything. Who outperformed, outsmarted his older siblings in a competition, who were cast into obscurity. Exiled to be nobodies. And she stared at him, shivering, not just because the cold mountain air nipped at her.

“I had to be intelligent. I had to be strong. I had to be perfect. I couldn’t depend on anyone. I couldn’t allow myself to feel fear. I would become prey if I showed any weakness. I was, and am, in absolute control of my emotions.”

His words wrapped around her like a scarf and she started falling in love.

* * *

“I... I made you this!” Touko says, bent over and holding out a paper heart basket.

The world continues to bumble around the pocket she carved into the courtyard that only Touko and Byakuya are privy to. Outside their bubble, shadowy figures blur as they swim past and sound like they’re talking underwater.

Byakuya glowers at the basket. Even when pulling a disgusted face like that, it’s like the heavens sculpted him from their finest marble.

“Homemade? You needn’t have bothered,” he says, flapping his hand. “I don’t eat cheap stuff... I’ll direct it to my disposal crew.”

She blinks. Goes, “Eh?”

“It’s nothing personal,” he says dismissively, and her grip is so slack she barely feels him pull the heart from between her fingers. “I wouldn’t accept it from anyone. I will have children with women all over the world, handpicked from the elite, and I will marry the mother of the most worthy heir.”

He dismisses himself and strides off with the heart. Touko breathes in shudderingly. The world comes crashing back in, like gales during a storm. Her head dips forward and her shoulders shake, but no one passing by casts more than a cursory glance.

Then she cracks up laughing and throws her head back.

“S-Such honesty...!” she cooes, hugging herself, and a few people stop and stare. “It burns... It burns!”

A wide smile plasters across her face, consuming her, and even though the whole world exists around her, she fixates on Byakuya’s receding silhouette.

* * *

Last Touko saw the sky, it was as red as a cartoon heart and the blood that dyes the outside world. Now, it exists behind impenetrable steel plates, and her only skies are the black ceiling of her room and the blue paint in the indoor garden. 

Touko spots Byakuya in the library. He sits perfectly still. She imagines cobwebs clinging to him like puppet strings.

“Byakuya-sama...” Her small voice carries. Byakuya doesn’t stir. That doesn’t deter her. She approaches. “I... r-remembered you didn’t want homemade chocolates, so before...”

Before this happened. The world ending. Your family being massacred.

“... I bought you these,” she says, holding out a paper heart basket. 

She bought the chocolates months ago. When she returned to the school with them, she bumped into some of her female classmates, and after a bombardment of questions, she yielded. They had blinked and thought they were reminding her when they said it wouldn’t be Valentine’s Day for ages.

But, see, these were famous chocolates. Handmade by Ruruka Ando herself, former Super High School Level Confectioner. Touko’s search for Ruruka started a day after Valentine’s Day, and only with Koichi Kizakura’s help did Touko find her, as Ruruka seemed to have been blacklisted after her expulsion.

He accepted payment in the form of some of those chocolates, which Touko saw Jin eating earlier this very day.

Touko breathes. Byakuya doesn’t look up as she sets down the basket onto his desk, nor as she backs out of the room.

* * *

“BYAKUYA-SAMA!”

Touko’s scream rattles the corridor walls. The windows. Everyone’s teeth. Yasuhiro and Makoto jump. Byakuya simply winces. He keeps his head forward while the other two turn around. They all stop walking, however. 

As Touko runs over, her shoes squeak against the polished floor with every step, and she skids to a halt near them in a creamy corridor in Future Foundation’s main headquarters. 

Yasuhiro waves. Her smile wanes.

“Here,” she says, like a switch flicked off in her to make her voice dull, and she gives Makoto and Yasuhiro a pouch of cheap chocolate each. She lights up again when she holds out a heart basket for Byakuya.

His arms remain folded over his chest.

“You’re as persistent as threadworms,” he grumbles.

Yasuhiro raises a hand to his mouth, his eyebrows shooting up. “You have threadworms?”

“No, I don’t,” says Byakuya coldly.

“I know a cure for it,” Yasuhiro offers, and he receives a scowl from Byakuya.

“I don’t have threadworms!” Byakuya snaps. He extends a hand, but it’s to push away the basket. “And I don’t want this junk.”

Touko looks down at her feet. Her arms sag to her sides.

“Togami-kun, you’re way too harsh,” says Makoto, frowning.

“I’ll have it!” volunteers Yasuhiro, but when he reaches for it, Touko hisses and he jolts back, yelping.

“Tch, I’ll dispose of it myself,” says Byakuya. He snatches the basket and marches off.

Touko lifts her head and squeals happily, clutching her cheeks.

Makoto and Yasuhiro sigh simultaneously.

* * *

“... we managed to take back control of the radio tower,” says Touko, at a desk. “No casualties.”

The hotel room buzzes like there’s a fly constantly whizzing about, but really it’s the artificial lighting. It gags into silence only when the switch by the door is flicked off, but the absence of its sound combined with the lack of light always makes Touko’s skin crawl, like she knows a pervert is spying on her, so she keeps the lights on.

Other than herself, only Komaru ever goes into the hotel room, but Touko can’t shake off that feeling. In front of her, on the computer monitor, Byakuya gives a minute nod, regarding her with his chin propped up in his hand.

“Excellent work,” he says. Her face warms. The mask on his doesn’t crack.

“You can depend on me!” she promises. She salutes.

Byakuya continues staring at her.

“I can, can’t I?” he muses in a murmur, then he speaks normally. “Are there any supplies you want us to drop in?”

“A-Actually...” She wrings her hands. “There’s something I have to give to you.”

“Oh?” he lets slip curiously. His brow furrows. 

“It’s Valentine’s Day soon,” she tells him, nodding. He shifts in his seat. “I wanted to give you something - ”

Byakuya shushes her by showing her his open palm. She falters.

“This isn’t the time for that,” he says.

That night, in bed, Komaru snoring beside her, Touko replays his words.

‘This isn’t the time’ implies there is one.

* * *

But, there almost isn’t.

Touko finds out he almost died when he mentions it casually in conversation.

“W-What?” she asks, eyes bulging. She shakes and so badly wants to grab him, like he might disappear at any moment, but he exists in digital form in the hotel room. Instead, she balls her hands into fists so tight her nails will leave glowing crescents.

Byakuya backtracks a little, having been about to move the conversation elsewhere.

“The building collapsed,” he says with a shrug. “Someone accidentally triggered a trap. No one died, thankfully.”

He breathes in, meets her gaze, and flinches.

Her voice fractures on his name. “B-Byakuya-sama...”

Just like that, he could have died. With no chance for her to do anything about it. No chance to say everything she ever wanted to say to him. His lips purse.

“For goodness sake, there’s no need to cry,” he says, but not unkindly. However, his tone doesn’t exactly ooze with comfort. “I’m unkillable.”

Tension continues to seize Touko’s body. He adjusts his glasses. Tilts back his head a little. Glares at her now.

“Also, you know, Naegi’s sister told me how your alter nearly had you go into space chasing that Towa brat,” he reprimands. “I’m the one who should be telling you off. You would have died.”

“But I came back,” Touko retorts. Her vision blurs despite her glasses. “K-Komaru told me... she said she reminded my alter of you, and she gave up and came back down.”

“Gave up?” Byakuya repeats. He shakes his head. “No. I think... that love of yours... gave you and your alter the strength to return. For so long, I thought feelings like that were a weakness... but... it’s a terrifyingly strong emotion, isn’t it?”

Silence, for a beat. Then he drags his voice back out.

“I knew I could trust you for that mission,” he says. “If I thought you would fail, I wouldn’t have risked sending you. Fukawa, I can trust you... for lots of things, can’t I?”

“Eh?” is all she can manage. Shock seals her tear glands. 

His eyes flicker. A strange, new expression colours his face. He coughs into his knuckles. 

“Well, it seems everything is in order,” he says quickly. “I have a meeting soon so... I’ll talk to you again then, alright? Same time as usual. Bye!”

He hangs up before she can get another word in.

* * *

Touko, Kyouko, Aoi and Komaru spend almost an entire day in the new Hope’s Peak’s kitchen. Silicon molds allow for mass production of chocolate treats, though it’s debatable whether more chocolate fills the pockets of the molds than that which covers the kitchen worktop surfaces and sits in certain people’s stomachs.

“Let me have just one spoonful!” begs Komaru, draping herself over Touko from behind. 

Despite Komaru’s pleas, Touko doesn’t relent. She hunches over her bowl, hugging it to her chest, but no matter how much Touko wills sets of springs to emerge from her spine and propel Komaru off her, none manifest. Instead, Komaru swipes at the bowl again, missing.

“Come on! What if it tastes bad?” says Komaru. “Do you want to take that risk?”

Admittedly, that makes Touko waver. Komaru attempts another grab at it.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Kyouko remarks nearby, standing beside Aoi, and Komaru pouts.

After Touko writhes some more, Komaru backs off her. Touko huffs and twists her body away from them.

“‘F-Fine?’ It’s better than fine!” scoffs Touko, sticking up her nose. “I can’t give Byakuya-sama subpar chocolate. He deserves only the very best!”

She grits her teeth until they all nod and chorus their agreement.

By evening, their molds are stowed away to cool and set, and everyone present helps clean up. Touko buffs a counter with a cloth, focused on the same spot, and she doesn’t realise that Aoi has wandered over until Aoi suddenly speaks up.

“Are you worried about how Togami’s going to respond?” asks Aoi, and cringes almost immediately. “I mean... he’s not one to mince his words.”

Touko slows her buffing. Stares down at her clouded reflection.

One time, Byakuya told Touko that no matter the distance between them, his feelings for her would not change. Byakuya would not feel a thing. But like the streaks on the surface of the counter, she wonders about the cracks in his. Things he has said that like the marks on the counter, no longer were. Such as, he also said he didn’t value friendship. That emotional bonds were weaknesses. That he would stay with them only until they eliminated despair. Then he would be off, rebuilding the conglomerate.

Yet here they were. Still here. Still together. Like a flower, he bloomed, and she did too.

“I’m not worried,” Touko tells Aoi at the same time as her reflection.

* * *

“I... I made you this!” Touko says, bent over and holding out a paper heart basket.

The air prickles like an itch on the back of one’s throat begging to be eased with a cough, worsening the longer Byakuya’s living room holds its breath. Byakuya stares down at the basket, woven together with two colours, deep blue and purple. He takes it and rubs it thoughtfully between his fingers.

“I know you said you prefer store bought,” she says, straightening, “b-but...”

Byakuya’s eyes widen and her breath catches in her throat. His lips creak ajar but he doesn’t say anything.

“... I w-wanted to make something for you!” she blurts. Her hands squeeze together. She scrunches her face, but still looks at him. “I wanted to make you honmei choco! B-Because... I... love you!”

This isn’t news to anyone. Byakuya slips a hand into the basket and pulls out one of the chocolates. Specifically, it’s a tofu chocolate truffle in the shape of a heart. Each of the chocolates have been rolled in various powders, so they are raspberry pink, coconut white, cacao brown, or, like the one that nestles between his thumb and forefinger, matcha green. He examines it for a few seconds before popping it into his mouth. She puts a hand over her heart. 

The rest of her vision softens, leaving only his face in high definition as he chews. Byakuya swallows.

“It’s delicious,” he declares, and she squeals, grinning. “Actually, it’s good you’re here. I wanted to show you something.”

Touko nods, but she’s too excited to take in what he’s saying yet. He walks to his desk. Opens a drawer. Takes out something flat. Something yellow and blue, like his hair, like his eyes.

She does a double take. Returns to reality. Feels a tremor ripple in her chest. “T-That’s...!”

He shifts the object. It becomes two. Three. No, there were always three, two were just beneath what she saw first. They are woven hearts. Two are the same colours, while one is purple and blue like the one she just gave him. That makes four.

“Those...” Touko steps back. “I t-thought you got rid of those years ago...?”

Yes. Those were all the baskets that she had ever given him.

“One would assume,” he admits. “I found two of these in my locker when we were renovating the school... without the chocolates inside, obviously. I remember I donated the first lot to a local shelter, but since then... I confess I have eaten them.”

For all the times she played this sort of scenario in her imagination, with rosy backgrounds and glittery highlights, when it happens now, her mind screeches to a halt.

“At the time, I didn’t understand why I kept them,” he says. “They’re just pieces of coloured paper woven together. I didn’t even like them. I hated them. The first time, I took the chocolates and left the basket in my locker, intending to dispose of it later, but by the time I came across it again, I decided not to throw it away.”

She presses her fist against her lips. “W-Why?”

Because he loves her. That’s what the voice in her head says. But she has to hear it from him. Byakuya studies the hearts for a little longer, then meets her gaze.

“There were times when my mind would stray to you, so in the end, I kept them until I had an answer as to why,” he replies. “It still happens. In fact, in more recent times, it has been happening more regularly. It can be incredibly annoying.”

He wrinkles his nose. His cheeks flush a delicate pink, but she barely registers it.

“W-What is your answer?” she asks, mind spinning.

Byakuya cocks his head.

“I thought it was customary for the man to respond to a woman’s Valentine on White Day,” he says.

She twitches.

“I... d-don’t mind...” she says, but it means a lot.

He heaves a sigh.

“Well, I suppose I’m already breaking a lot of old Togami traditions, so let’s compromise,” he says. “I will partially answer now.”

Byakuya puts the baskets down, walks over, grabs her shoulders and stoops. His lips press against her forehead. She sets aflame.

“But... the conglomerate...?” she mumbles, beginning to wonder if she’ll wake up, and hooks her fingers against his shirt.

Touko doesn’t wake up.

“Of course, I will still rebuild it,” he says, pulling her closer. “With you, it will be better than it has ever been.”


End file.
